Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Hozier, Unreal Unearth (2023 album)

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Hozier’s much-anticipated album Unreal Unearth was released on August 18, 2023. The album, which is comprised of songs mostly written during and immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic, is loosely constructed around Dante’s nine circles. Hozier is extremely eloquent in talking about how his songs take up Dante’s ideas, themes, and images, and his press and social media interviews are worth a listen for anyone interested in his adaptations of Dante!

“While keen to stress that the record is by no means a concept album, Hozier went on to explain how Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell had provided a handy framing device for the record. Specifically, the album reflects upon two of the nine circles of hell: gluttony and heresy.

‘There’s a subtle element and I wanted to be light and playful with it. The album can be taken as a collection of songs, but also as a little bit of a journey. It starts with a descent and I’ve arranged the songs according to their themes into nine circles, just playfully reflecting Dante’s nine circles and then an ascent at the end,’ he said.

‘Because I think everyone went on a little bit of a journey over the last two years, everybody went through something changed, something about their lives, something about their work, something about themselves and came out the other side, slightly changed in some way, shape or form and that, it was sort of, that was just, that’s just how the album is arranged.'”   –Nick Reilly, “Hozier on new EP ‘Eat Your Young’ and how Dante’s ‘Inferno’ inspired him,” RollingStone UK (March 17, 2023)

See the official videos for “Eat Your Young” (Hozier’s take on gluttony),”All Things End” (heresy), and more on Hozier’s YouTube channel.

Contributed by many friends of Dante Today, including Aspen Foulk, Alyssa Granacki, Akash Kumar, Robert Alex Lee, Caleb Taylor, and Emily Yemington. Many thanks to all the contributors!

“The Convalescent” by Manic Street Preachers (2001)

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Alberto Juanterino unique in his field
These are the things that, that make you feel
Klaus Kinski with love of Werner Herzog
Scream until the war is over[x2]
Srebrenica cousin of Treblinka
Scream until the war is over
War is over
And Dante’s Inferno slides into dysmorphia
So scream until the war is over” [. . .]

On their 2001 album Know Your Enemy, Manic Street Preachers‘ song “The Convalescent” contains the lyric “And Dante’s Inferno slides into dysmorphia” in verse three. (Manic Street Preachers, Epic, March 19, 2001)

Contributed Victoria Nicholls (The Bolles School, ’22)

Mono’s 9th Album, Requiem for Hell (2016)

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mono-requiem-for-hell-album-dante“Perhaps the most surprising thing about Mono making a record inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy is that it took them nine albums to do it. Since their dramatic 2001 debut Under the Pipal Tree, the Japanese ensemble’s arrangements have only swelled, growing ever grander and more orchestral—like a lot of instrumental post-rock bands, they’ve often struggled with how to one-up themselves. So on Requiem for Hell, their ninth album, they look to nothing less than the mother of all epics, Dante’s account of the journey of man’s soul, on a song cycle patterned around the rhythms of life and death. If that all sounds lofty, it is, but no more so than any other Mono album from the last decade. At this point in their career, going big is their default play.” — Evan Rytlewski, “Mono: Requiem for Hell: Album Review,” Pitchfork.com

Contributed by Pete Maiers

Weezer, “L.A. Girlz” (2016)

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Weezer-LA-Girlz-Dante-Beatrice-2016“L.A. girls, please act your age
You treat me like I have the plague
It’s the Gyre and Gimble in the wabe
L.A. girls, please act your age
Sweeten up your lemonade
And meet me down at tower twenty-eight
So would you mind if I was pregnant?
I’ll sleep on the edge of your bed
Like Dante and Beatrice
We’ll light up our candles
But how is this going to end?
The kids are asleep
We’re haunting their dreams
And some women swear it’s more painful than labor
To die with your sins on your head” — Weezer, “L.A. Girlz,” The White Album (2016)

Watch the video for the song on YouTube.

Contributed by Megan Alvarado (University of Texas at Austin, ’18)

Purgatory/Paradise by Throwing Muses

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kristen-hersch-throwing-muses“The title of the first Throwing Muses record in a decade is Purgatory/Paradise, but frontwoman Kristin Hersh has another name for it. ‘Our pet name is Precious/Pretentious,’ she says with a laugh. Speaking from Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island, where she was raised, she says that while the title does not reference Dante – it’s actually a reference to an intersection of roads on the island – she’s happy to have escaped the inferno of making the album. ‘It took us five years to make this record and we are absolutely obsessed with it,’ she tells Rolling Stone.” [. . .]    –Kory Grow, Rolling Stone, November 29, 2013

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Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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